The present invention is directed generally to various embodiments of systems and methods of providing alerts.
Electronic and mechanical equipment in shared environments such as telecommunication central offices, water purification plants, etc. may be subject to tampering because supervision of the various individuals working in the environments is limited, access to the environments may be required at odd hours, the environment may generally be unstaffed, awareness of each individual's allowed scope of access (e.g. equipment that an individual is allowed to access) may be difficult to determine, and individuals may be able to gain unauthorized access with little or no deterrents once inside the environments.
Many environments have employed closed-circuit television cameras for monitoring purposes. However, often those individuals with visual access to monitors attached to the cameras do not have the information needed to verify whether an individual is authorized to access certain equipment or areas within the monitored environment. Many environments also have access restricted by means of locked doors. However, individuals may obtain unauthorized keys or may defeat such locks by, for example, picking the locks.
If a suspicious event occurs, oftentimes security response personnel or skilled equipment technicians respond manually to the event when alerted. Such manual responses may be costly and may not occur in a timely fashion. In an environment in which responses to events are partially automated, a “fail over” scheme may be employed in which redundant equipment that is configured to be used in case of such an event is activated.